Late-in-life reader leads mission for literacy

John Corcoran learned to read at 48, now he and his granddaughter lead reading programs for children in two states

Portrait of John Corcoran and his granddaughter Kayla Mertes in a study room at the John Corcoran Foundation Second Nature Learning Center on S. Coast Highway in Oceanside. Kayla is the Foundation's Executive Director that teaches kids and adults to read. John did not learn to read until he was 48 years old.
— Charlie Neuman

Portrait of John Corcoran and his granddaughter Kayla Mertes in a study room at the John Corcoran Foundation Second Nature Learning Center on S. Coast Highway in Oceanside. Kayla is the Foundation's Executive Director that teaches kids and adults to read. John did not learn to read until he was 48 years old.
— Charlie Neuman

OCEANSIDE  Twenty-eight years ago, John Corcoran learned to read at the age of 48.

Today — with the help of a granddaughter who was born the same year he read his first book — he runs a nonprofit foundation that teaches reading skills to grade-school children as well as adults like himself, a former schoolteacher who hid his secret for nearly five decades.

With as little as $500 and 20 hours of instruction, the John Corcoran Foundation can bring most pupils’ reading skills up to grade level or beyond. The results can be life-changing, said Corcoran’s granddaughter Kayla Mertes, the foundation’s executive director.

Two-thirds of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare, according to a study by the One World Literacy Foundation. In San Diego County there are 500,000 adults who read below elementary school level. Nationwide, that figure is 44 million.

“It filled a big hole in my soul when I learned to read,” said Corcoran, 76. “If America could get really focused on teaching its children to read, we’re going to fill a big hole in America’s soul.”

Since Corcoran first confessed his secret at a meeting of the San Diego Council on Literacy in 1988, he has traveled the world as a literacy advocate, appeared on “Oprah” and published a best-selling memoir, “The Teacher Who Couldn’t Read.” Seven years ago, he put his words into action by launching a tutoring program, which Mertes runs from a storefront called the Second Nature Learning Center on South Coast Highway in Oceanside.

View of the John Corcoran Foundation Second Nature Learning Center on S. Coast Highway. The organization teaches kids and adults to read.
— Charlie Neuman

View of the John Corcoran Foundation Second Nature Learning Center on S. Coast Highway. The organization teaches kids and adults to read.
— Charlie Neuman

Lead teacher Kim Pines said she’s been amazed at how a few months of reading instruction can change so many lives. A quarter of the center’s young pupils are English language learners, and many of them have parents who cannot read.

“I love it here. We teach a child to read and it makes a difference for the entire family,” Pines said. “It’s like a ripple in a pond. You drop in that one little pebble and it goes and goes and goes.”

Corcoran was born with an auditory processing disorder that left him unable to distinguish the sounds between letters. In grade school, he was moved to the “dumb row” when he fell behind. In middle school he got angry. In high school, he started lying to hide his secret and earn a diploma. And at the University of Texas at El Paso, which he attended on a basketball scholarship, he cheated his way to a degree.

The first job he landed, ironically, was teaching high school English in Carlsbad. He would spend 17 years as a high school instructor, mostly in Oceanside, teaching social studies, world history and P.E.

“It sounds crazy, I know, but I guess there was something in me that wanted to fix it,” Corcoran said. “Teachers are seekers of the truth. As a teacher, I was a liar, and I’ve apologized for my crimes and trespasses.”

Corcoran’s colleagues and students weren’t the only people he fooled. Even his wife, Kathleen, didn’t know for many years.